Shanneyganock's Chris Andrews honours Beaumont-Hamel tragedy in song

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"I thought I was going to get a few emails, write a quick song and it would be three or four days' work. It ended up being one of the most stressful things ever in my life."

That is how Chris Andrews of the band Shanneyganock describes his experience creating "One More Will Stand," a song he wrote to mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War battle that had a profound effect on the province of Newfoundland.

The Somme Offensive took place on July 1, 1916, in Beaumont-Hamel, France. It was 30 minutes of battle, predicated by bad information, that left hundreds of Newfoundland men dead or injured. CBC commissioned Andrews to write a song to mark the anniversary of the occasion, and when he asked for inspiration to help him, the emails poured in. Instead of writing about just one of the many stories he received, Andrews chose to incorporate a multitude of them in order to paint a fuller picture and to make the song one for all of the soliders and families affected by the battle that day.

"It's one of the biggest things I've ever taken on," he says.

Watch Andrews talk about the challenges of writing the song in the player below.